Using Events to Grow Your Association’s Membership: 4 Tips

Events are a great way to engage your association’s membership. But did you know they’re also a great way to grow your association’s membership?

That’s right. By following a few best practices, you can actually maximize the impact of your events. Take a look!

1. Plan an event with value

This probably goes without saying, but in order to attract potential members to your organization’s event, you need to plan an event with appeal. That is to say, your event needs to have some value. Whether that value comes in the form of an interesting speaker, some fun entertainment, an educational opportunity, or all three - that’s completely up to you. Just make sure it’s valuable enough that someone who’s not a member of your organization would still want to come.

Not sure what your potential members would find valuable? Consider building out member personas. More about that here.

2. Consider bundling event registration and membership

Let’s say you have some non-members interested in registering for your event. If so, that’s great! But why not allow/encourage them to sign up for membership as well - right then and there ON the event registration page? That way, they only have to enter their payment information once. You could even bundle the membership and event registration at a discounted price, giving people even more of an incentive to join.

3. Make it easy for individuals and organizations to register

If your membership is made up of organizations and individuals, you’ll want to make it easy for both member types to register/join. Some association management systems, such as MemberClicks, make this extremely easy to do. They even allow contacts who aren’t members at an organization to register and sign up others. And the easier it is for users to sign people up, the easier it is to grow your association’s membership.

4. Follow up with non-member attendees and no-shows

This is perhaps the most important step of them all. Don’t let your non-member attendees and no-shows fall off the map. Send them a few emails encouraging them to 1) attend other meetings and events, and 2) join your organization! You can even offer them a special discount code to really get the ball rolling.

Now these are just a few quick tips, but there’s plenty more where that came from. For a full breakdown of how to grow your organization’s membership using events, check out our free guide below!